Dutiful Servant
The people of Thria celebrated their victory. They had carried tables and benches from the inn into the town square for a feast lasting far into the hours of the night. Pheraen soldiers sat next to farmers, and local merchants shared their plate with Tellius refugees. The spilled blood of the usurper's forces had glued them together into the image of peace Roy once imagined when he had pulled the winged crown from the ashes.
The darkness outside the glow of celebratory fires lingered, but the people toasted to each other and laughed as though they had slain the gods themselves rather than a mere twenty knights.
Roy did not sit with them. For an hour or so, he walked among his subjects, yes, he accepted praises and words of gratitude and vows from those who wanted nothing more than to fight for him in the next battle. Stagnation had controlled their days. But Roy offered them purpose, change, and true peace for those who dared to imagine it. For this, he showed his face while the celebration remained in its infancy.
Yet he was not one of them. And when comradery flowed between the people in the same excess as liquor flowed into their mugs, Roy quit the noise of festivity. After all, solitude had been his closest companion since the weight of the crown had found its way to him.
For a few short-lived moments, he had thought to replace solitude with the smiles and the awe of a blue-haired girl who would toddle from her bedpost into his arms.
Roy shook his head to chase away the memory. The girl had grown up and away from him, into the voracious grasp of her goddess, Naga. He needed to free himself of such memories as he had freed himself of his boyhood when he had first taken the crown. For the sake of peace. True peace as Marth had envisioned it.
Before Naga had corrupted him.
On the snow-coated hill outside Thria, the laughs from the town square faded into a distant murmur, no more distinct than the wordless whispers of the river. The air burned with cold in Roy's nose. But it was Pheraen air, and not a glitter of Johtran's ice crystals remained for him to taste.
He stroked the Binding Blade and the red stone embedded into its cross guard. A strangely affectionate gesture.
Sêl emerged into the winter air, and Roy found it difficult to tell whether her flames or her smile illuminated the night.
"This is your first victory," she said. "You should celebrate it."
"I will celebrate once I have reclaimed the throne. Every hour that passes allows her to drive the Pheraen Empire closer to ruin. Thria, this insignificant village, was divided and ridden with conflict before I came here. I can only imagine how much worse the rest of the land looks. All because of her."
Sêl tilted her head. "And yet you love her."
The blue-haired girl had looked up to Roy when he had returned triumphantly from his campaign in Sacae. Everyone in the yard had bent their knees. She had beamed, the word 'hero' on her lips.
Roy exhaled, and the memory escaped him alongside his breath.
"I love my country," he said. "And I will do everything necessary to rebuild and protect it."
Sêl reached out. Her eyes flickered with uncertainty, but then she pushed through and cupped his face with her hands. The touch prickled with warmth. Roy let her.
"The way you say that," Sêl whispered, "makes you sound even more like Hartmut."
"Do you wish you could return to him? To the era of legends?"
Sêl pulled away, but Roy caught her wrist. She did not struggle, only looked at him until he eased his grip.
"Why do you ask?"
"Because I need you to be honest with me," Roy said. "And I cannot be entirely sure of your loyalty until I understand the thoughts you are hiding from me."
"I… understand. My powers must remind you of the gods you despise so much."
"Pherae would still be at peace if not for the involvement of gods. Naga tricked Lucina the same way she tricked Marth." Roy swept his arm across the fields of Pherae in front of him, hidden in darkness. "The people of Pherae have cultivated this land. Humankind has made it its own. But Naga, in whatever form she exists, refuses to allow her creation to thrive without her. So she sent her champion to conquer and destroy what humankind has claimed. How can I not despise her? Again and again, she snaps my accomplishments away from me. But the face through which she does it now…"
"Naga's Voice has tricked humans far older and wiser than Lucina."
Roy frowned. During the battle at the capital, Lucina had commanded a dragon; the creature of legends had descended from the heavens to thwart Roy's carefully constructed strategy with one swoop. But if this had been no dragon at all…
A Manakete, of course. Roy struggled to match the white dragon with the small girl he had once seen in Johtran's dungeons, her face ridden with cuts and her limbs broken to thin splinters on Eliwood's order. Yet it all made too much sense. And Sêl had recognized the involvement of Naga's Voice. Long before he had drawn similar conclusions.
"But surely the magic of Naga's Voice is no match for you," Roy said.
A flicker travelled across Sêl's face, brief but unmistakable. "The powers given to me have limits. A true blessing from Naga would withstand my magic."
"And how would such a blessing manifest?"
"Usually through fire."
"Similar to the wall of blue fire on the plaza, you could say? The one that protected the son of Gawain."
"Yes, that was Naga's doing. I recognize the flames."
"You know an awful lot about Naga," Roy said. "A little too much if you ask me."
A jolt went through Sêl, her flames dimmed. Eyes wide, she tried in vain to free herself from Roy's grip.
"It's because you too are her creation, isn't it so?" Roy increased the pressure on Sêl's wrist.
"Roy, I—"
"Don't lie to me. The similarities between her fire and yours are too obvious, and if you aren't a goddess as you claim to be, Naga must have transferred this power to you. You gave yourself away. You said the powers given to you had limits. Not your powers."
Roy brought his face mere inches from Sêl's. "What I don't understand is this: Why are you siding against Naga when you know I'm going to war with her champion?"
Sêl slumped in Roy's grip. The wind almost carried off her voice when she spoke. "It is true. Naga created me. Me and four other tools for the single purpose of shaping wars and human conflicts to her liking. Just as her Voice shapes the mind of humans."
"Then why?"
"I… I cannot exist as her tool anymore. Hartmut would not have cast me away if I had not begged him. Even when the war was over and he had no more need for a sword, he asked me to stay. But she… she is in my head. And when I talked to him, when he smiled at me, every time, I wondered when the words would no longer be my own. When they would be hers.
"So, I chose isolation. For one millennium, this one thought trapped me in the cold of my seal. Cursed only to remember. And just when I had again found the touch of a human, she sent her champion against him. Against you. I wish I could have aided you more in your battle against her. But Naga forced me to remain still. And once again all that I gained for my loyalty was cold as her champion tossed me into the river."
"So you reached out to me."
Sêl met Roy's gaze. "Yes. I do not know what Naga's true intentions are. Maybe she has an eternal paradise in mind. But I cannot be her tool in its creation. Not when all she leaves me with are memories and an eternal cold."
"Is that why you vanished after you saw the blue flames in front of Ike?"
Sêl nodded. "It was her."
Roy let go of her wrist, gently. But he lacked the words to comfort her, and he could not lose sight of his goal. His next words were those of a king, not a friend; detached, not empathetic. But it cost him more than he liked to admit to uphold this tone.
"Naga's direct influence could cause a problem for us," he said. "Her Voice has had months to poison Lucina's thoughts, but this is different. I would have understood if Naga used this magic fire to protect her precious champion. But to go to such lengths for him, a faithless man from Tellius?"
Sêl played along and buried fear and sorrow deep inside her flames. "Perhaps Naga offered this blessing because of Lucina. Perhaps she was afraid to lose him."
"Then let that be her weakness. The more she fears, the weaker grows her control over Lycia. The people of Pherae will notice as they have noticed her failures here in Thria. And when they do, she will sit on the throne alone. I may have failed to defeat her before, but I was blinded then. With your help, with the power you possess, I can reclaim what she stole from me."
"These flames alone cannot win the war for you."
"I know. Lucina overthrew Pherae with less than one hundred fighters. But when she falls, it will be by the hands of many."
Roy reached into his pockets and pulled out the last of his three rings. The ruby embedded into gold reflected Sêl's flames until the stone seemed to house a fire of its own. With a heavy heart, Roy ran his thumb across the engraved dragons curling across the ring's surface. He had once slipped it from Ninian's cold finger. His mother. She had always sought refuge in the cool shade of Lycia's plane trees or in the vast underground chambers where hoar frost blossomed on the walls even in summer. She had loved the cold.
Until she had gone cold herself.
After her body had been given to the pyre, this ring remained the only memento Roy had left of her.
"You can reach out to people far beyond the proximity of the Binding Blade, can't you?" he asked Sêl. "You appeared to me all the way in Johtran. Could you manage a similar feat again?"
Sêl nodded.
Roy placed the ring into her palm. "Take this to Shanna in Talys. If she has remained loyal to me until now, she will join us on our march against Lycia. She will recognize the ring as that of my mother."
Sêl followed the twisting dragons on their way across the golden surface with her forefinger. "What happened to her? Your mother, I mean."
"She died. To this day I do not know why someone wanted her dead. The arrow that killed her had Altean carvings on it. Maybe Marth ordered the shot. That is what I believed for the longest time at least. Maybe that too was by Naga's design."
Sêl's eyes darkened and left the hillcrest a little colder than before. "It's… a cruel world we walk across."
"It doesn't have to be. At least, that was what I hoped once. A foolish dream maybe, but when the gods only exist to deceive us, what else but dreams do we have to believe in? I can make this cruel world better. For the people celebrating on the town square. And for you."
With a small, almost hesitant, but entirely human smile, Sêl closed her fingers around the ring. "You asked me whether I wished to return to Hartmut and the era of legends. The answer is no. I wish to stand behind you when you realize your dream."
"Because you were created to help the wielder of the Binding Blade?"
"No, Roy. That wish… is my own."
Roy resisted the tempting pull of Sêl's warmth and stepped back. But he couldn't help himself from following the swirls and flickers across her face until he threatened to lose himself in a world of fire. Perhaps there was beauty amidst the horrors the gods had created after all. The tiny flicker of a candle amidst a two-part darkness.
"Tell Shanna to meet me in Satar in a week," Roy said. "I believe I owe Marcus a visit. And when you have relayed my message… come back as soon as you can, will you?"
"I will." Sêl gestured at the Binding Blade at Roy's side. "I'm never far."
The next gust chased her away, and only her bright contours burned as an afterimage in Roy's vision. It was tempting to reminisce about this fleeting ghost, but Roy turned his attention towards the vast Pheraen landscape instead. A long ride separated him from the sandstone palace. But Lucina would receive the message of Roy's victory in Thria soon enough. One rider sufficed to carry the news. The dead spoke for themselves. And then Lucina would fear.
And when she crumbled, the people of Pherae would open the gates for Roy.
Lucina crumbled.
A single horse dashed through the gates, trembling, drenched in sweat and with foam around its mouth. The hooves clashed against the cobblestone, too lonely, too weak, too defeated. Titania barely held herself upright in the saddle. And behind her, a lifeless body. With a headband.
"A stretcher, quickly!" someone shouted. Maybe Frederick.
Other people were shouting too, they rushed back and forth across the yard, and news spread like wildfire. Rath ordered guards back to their posts. Tiki appeared amidst the chaos as if summoned by Naga.
Lucina didn't recognize any of them. Her legs trembled with every step. The blood roared in her ears.
Titania dropped from her horse and clutched the man she had dragged all the way from Thria to the capital, across barren fields and enemy territory. The golden greatsword she had strapped to her back instead of her halberd slowed her movements. Or was it pure dread that made her arms tremble?
Someone helped her heave the body onto a stretcher. The face underneath a covering of dirt and blood had gone pale. Deathly pale.
Lucina felt herself make another step forward. Or maybe she stumbled like a drunkard towards the two soldiers who carried the stretcher between them, stumbled until she could have followed the contours of the deathly pale face with her fingers if she had maintained control over her muscles.
Ike lay there as if dead. Burn scars crisscrossed over his right arm where the sleeve had been torn away. Blood still stained his face. Blood of the people he had killed, blood of his comrades, his blood, she couldn't say. But it was too much. She had seen corpses; beheaded rebels, soldiers in the dust, people on pyres she lit with her own hands, but nothing had prepared her for this. The faintest tremor moved Ike's chest with shallow breaths.
But he lay there as if dead.
Faintly, Lucina noticed Frederick's hands on her shoulders, and maybe that was the only thing that prevented her from shattering. She lacked the words to ask for a report or order the soldiers to transport Ike into the hospital wing. Even the prayers to Naga died half-formed in the echo chambers of her head as she stared at Ike.
The man she had thought undefeatable, unmatched on the battlefield, now lay before her as if dead. And she had brought this upon him. As the obedient master strategist in Naga's name, she had directed Ike into the arms of death. And she hadn't even fought alongside him.
Like Navarre had said: No one rode or died with her these days. They rode and died for her.
"We were ambushed as soon as we entered Thria," Titania said. Her voice came from far away, as if the currents of a river roared between them. "Roy knew we were coming. He pulled the entire town on his side."
"What about the others?" Lucina heard herself ask. "The rest of your party?"
"Ike was the only one I could get out of there. There was a blue fire on the town square, and I… all I could think about was that I needed to get him away from there while Roy was distracted. He… he hasn't opened his eyes once during the ride back. I didn't dare to stop at the other towns on the way, I thought Roy might have swayed the people there too."
"You did all you could." The words sounded hollow even in Lucina's ears. "Rest yourself."
She didn't raise her eyes long enough to verify whether Titania obeyed the order. Tiki, meanwhile, searched Ike's body with her hands and gave the stretcher carriers another reason to halt. Lucina hardly noticed this either. How many days had passed since she had replaced Ike's battered travel cloak with the cape worthy of a general? The red mass now frizzed around his shoulders, torn and burned beyond repair.
Lucina reached for his bare arm. He had said he was freezing without his cloak. Couldn't the others see he was freezing? He had to be cold. So cold…
Frederick increased his grip on her shoulders. "Lucina…"
She struggled against his gentle attempts to shove her inside. Inside the sandstone walls waited no warmth for her. Dizzy, as if she was standing too high on a mountain top with too little air to spare, she fumbled with the clasp of her own cape, but she failed to loosen the metal pin, let alone drape the fabric over Ike's bare arm.
Something glistered on his chest. The pendant Lucina had given him. Her parting gift – she choked even thinking about this sentence. A large crack split Tiki's tear down the middle.
"You said it would protect him." Lucina stared at Tiki, but her small silhouette blurred. "You gave me your word."
Tiki flinched under Lucina's tone. As if a parent had scolded her. "I don't understand… It protected him from death. The magic of Naga's blessing worked, but I don't understand why he isn't waking up. It's like his skin is still burning…"
"But you can heal him. You healed me after Roy stabbed me in Terra, you can do the same for him. Come on, he's right here!"
Tiki sniffed away tears. Not tears for Ike, no it was Lucina's voice that tripped her off balance. Insincere. Wrong.
"This is the work of magic I don't understand," Tiki said. "It's stronger than anything I can create. Almost on par with Naga herself."
"You have to do something. Let me talk to Naga at once!"
Tiki shook her head. "We have to wait. I'm sorry. She… she won't listen to me."
Lucina's knees threatened to give in. To the five hells with the eyes on her, to the five hells with the crown and all of the Pheraen Empire. If this was the price Naga demanded for her eternal paradise, Lucina refused to pay it. All the other people who had ridden with Ike, they had followed her call as rebels of Altea, they had looked at her with awe long before the streams of pilgrims had washed into the capital. In one sense or another, they had viewed Lucina with love.
Once she had promised the realize their dreams. But instead, she had sacrificed them for a winged crown she hated. She had placed them at the offering table before Naga's feet so willingly; the champion revered by the faithful who would surely know the steps necessary to win the war.
Lucina knew nothing.
The soldiers, no, the rebels she had sent out to capture Roy had died for nothing.
And nothing would remain once Roy took Archanea out of Lucina's inept hands.
Frederick, who was still standing half a step behind her and provided the ghost of stability to her trembling shoulders, gave the order she couldn't produce. "Bring him to the hospital wing," he said to the carriers. "Make sure someone tends to his wounds and his fever. Send for every healer available, in the name of the queen."
The pair nodded and trudged inside. A young soldier hurried ahead to call for the healers. At the end of the procession, Frederick guided Lucina. Without the gentle push of his arms, she would have stood frozen in the yard until Roy knocked at the gates.
Rath still carried the crown Lucina had dropped, and after a barked order at an overly curious guard, tried to approach Lucina. "The heir to Eliwood will waste no time to advance," he said. "Neither should we waste time to counter his forces. Towns in the west and south need to show military presence now more than ever."
"Yes," Lucina said. She was barely listening.
"Satar offers the heir to Eliwood not only new riders for his hunt but also the steel to equip them with sabers. If we hesitate, the town will be ripe for his taking when he arrives."
"Yes."
Rath shoved the crown towards Lucina, but she made no move to take it. After a moment, he gave up. "I will send a messenger to our friends in Persis. They might catch the heir to Eliwood in Satar where we cannot."
When Lucina gave no indication to approve or reject his plan, Rath left her side and made the preparations Lucina couldn't bring herself to think about. It was all so pointless. If Ike hadn't even slowed Roy, and if all her fighters ended up like him, lifeless or worse, what hope was there? Naga had forsaken them.
Frederick increased his grip around Lucina's shoulders.
The procession had barely climbed the first flight of stairs to the hospital wing when Cordelia bolted towards them. Her eyes went wide, and fear, absolute and genuine, captured her face.
"Ike…" His name sounded like a prayer on her lips.
She rushed to his side, one hand interwoven with his, the other on its way to caress his face, wordless gestures to beg him to open his eyes.
And she cried. She did what Lucina was unable to do, and her tears ran along Ike's bare throat where faintly a pulse flickered. But even Cordelia's touch failed to reach him in the burning depths of his body. He lay there as if dead. Dead because of…
"It's your fault," Cordelia pressed out. When she looked up to Lucina, fire flashed behind the veil of her tears. "It's all your fault."
"Roy is the one who did this to him," Frederick said.
But Cordelia ignored him, her glare locked onto Lucina. "It's your fault. He wouldn't have ridden out if not for you. Everything he did these past months, all the battles he fought was for you. Everything is always about you! Your empire and your war and your goddess! But you can't do anything by yourself, no, you have to shove others in front of you so you can walk on their backs. It's the same you did with Gregor!"
"I never wanted him to die for me," Lucina said.
"But you made him do it anyway! Your speeches and your words of inspiration – all so that others pave the way for you. Damn it, it was so easy to believe in you! You, with the mystical sword and the dragon and the victories you summoned out of your sleeve. But how am I supposed to believe in the murderer of all the people that have ever been important to me?"
"No one regrets their deaths more than I do! If Naga had given me the power to resurrect them, I would have brought them back. But I can't!"
"No." Cordelia stepped away from Ike.
The carriers used the opportunity to escape the emerging battlefield. Cordelia didn't give them a second look. The tears had dried.
"No," she said, "what you can't do is lead the Empire. What you can't do is win this war. You are too weak to kill when it's necessary. This wouldn't have happened if you had cut off Roy's head when you had the chance. And you make the same mistake again and again."
"You are out of your mind, Cordelia," Frederick said. "Mercy is not a mistake. It was Lucina's mercy that saved your life and that of your fellow rebels in Gran. Have you forgotten that?"
"Stay out of this!" Cordelia snapped before she turned back to Lucina. "Or do you have to rely on him to defend yourself even with this?"
"Do you want to make a murderer out of me?" Lucina freed herself from Frederick's support to meet Cordelia eye to eye. "Is that what you want?"
"What's the point in wishing? You're going to cling to your stupid ideals anyway. Naïve little princess. You didn't have it in you to kill Roy. You refused to kill Shanna even though you knew her death would have prevented war with Talys. And you refused to kill Marcus. You wanted him dead, silent forever, disappeared in the fire. Isn't that how you put it?"
"I never—"
"But even then, you couldn't do it. That's why I set his residence on fire. Because I knew you would never give the order out loud."
Lucina froze. The stairway under her feet flipped, and Tiki and Frederick and everything else faded into white until only Cordelia's murderous face remained.
"You did it," Lucina said. "You laid the fire."
"That's what I just said. And really, if you think about it for one second you would realize this solved so many of—"
Lucina crossed the last step between them and slapped Cordelia across the face.
The hit rebounced from the sandstone walls. The sound distorted in its echo, grew louder, more violent, triumphant in the face of Cordelia's stunned silence.
"You are the one who is naïve," Lucina said. Her voice had abandoned all emotions. "You murdered a man who could have been our best asset in the fight against Roy. That is why you could never win back Talys without my help. You can't plan farther ahead than the length of your spear, and when I do explain my plans to you, you play deaf. I needed Marcus, is that so difficult to understand?"
Cordelia held her reddening cheek. Her eyes had the look of a wild horse in a trap, with the sling already tied around its neck. Or that of a loyal servant beaten by their master for the first time.
"He said he would never join you." Cordelia took a step back. "Most likely, he was the one who called Navarre onto you. He would have only stood in the way of the Talys offensive, he was a risk."
"Stop pretending like you had noble motives. You murdered him!"
"I did it for you! You would have never sentenced him to death, even though he would have sold you to Roy. Even though you wanted him out of the way. I did it for you!"
Lucina closed her eyes for a long moment. When she spoke, her words cut through the foyer like icy daggers. "Get out of my sight."
Cordelia pressed herself against the banister. "But I—"
"That was an order. Don't force me to repeat myself."
Cordelia's frantic eyes shot from Lucina to Frederick in search for support. But Frederick remained motionless half a step behind Lucina. A pained expression tormented his features without a doubt. Yet, an order was an order. Painful or not.
When Lucina did not budge, and all hopes of an apology revealed their falsity, Cordelia took flight. Panic drove her steps, but even then she did what Lucina could not and ran towards the hospital wing.
"Cancel all my appointments for today," Lucina said without looking at Frederick.
"The scheduled speech to the citizens of Pherae…"
"Let Rath do that. No one is to enter my chambers or even think about knocking on the doors."
The conflict screamed from Frederick's voice. "Is there anything I—"
"No, you can't help me. I'm Naga's champion and the queen of the Pheraen Empire. I don't need the help you could provide."
Lucina left Frederick where he stood. The way to her chambers blurred before her eyes, and she didn't register the softness of the carpet or the patterns of red and blue as she marched over the threshold.
The wooden door shut behind her. Enveloped by utter silence, the silence of a grave, Lucina sank to the floor, her back pressed against the wood.
There she crumbled.
Notes: Yep, we're back on schedule. I'm sorry to report that there won't be any sections from Ike's POV in the near future. His sarcasm will be missed. Hopefully his absence won't make the upcoming chapters too miserable. But really, who am I kidding, I wanted it to be this way all along. In the next chapter, meanwhile, Roy will take the offensive.